Like all religions, the religion of state thrives on rites, rituals and relics, striving to put its god — political government — at the center of human existence. Seldom has this been more apparent than in the run-up to the tenth anniversary of the terror attacks of September 11th, 2001.
Pursuant to a New York Port Authority program launched in 2010, the globe is now dotted with shrines to 9/11. No fewer than 1,300 of them, in fact, pieced together from the twisted steel ruins of the World Trade Center complex.
Most of these shrines are placed so as to draw positive attention to “first responders,” especially police departments. “First responders” have become the parish-level clergy — the domestic omnipresence — of the 9/11 cult, endlessly parading in their clerical vestments and administering minor sacraments such as the warrantless search and the no-knock raid.
The cult’s foreign missionary effort, carried out from hundreds of bases abroad by mid-level clergy, resembles nothing so much as the Aztec custom of mass abduction and human sacrifice.
The higher clergy of the cult are, of course, jealous of their own prerogatives. Mere “first responders” need not pencil in time to attend the 10th anniversary ceremonies at Ground Zero: They’re not invited. The big 9/11 observances are tributes to the politicians whose policies made the attacks inevitable and who have since continuously doubled down on those policies.
In traditional Christianity, the leader sacrificed himself that the followers might live forever and the gentiles gathered in as well. The 9/11 cult’s approach is precisely the opposite: It is the followers and the foreigners who are sacrificed that the political class might thrive.
In Catholic communion, the wafer and wine become the body and blood of Christ, representing his sacrifice on your behalf. Behold the 9/11 cult’s miracle of record: Transubstantiation of the Ski Mask, in which you and your labor become wafer and wine, consumed at gunpoint by holy muggers for the perpetual vivification of the state.
Not that the 9/11 cult is in any way unique: Its power is in its relative youth and vigor, not in any special difference between it and the larger religion of political government. The paths to its shrines are not yet as well-worn as those to Arlington National Cemetery or Marx’s grave, nor are its slogans yet as faded and banal as “Remember the Maine” or “all power to the soviets.” But its principles remain eternal and unchanging. Moloch’s face and figure may evolve, but his blood thirst remains unquenched, the fire in his belly never cools, and his moral imperative always boils down to “let us prey.”
The state is a covenant with death and an agreement with hell. To abide it is to embrace the glamour of evil and accept mastery by sin, to willingly submit to continual baptism in the innocent blood of kin and stranger alike. If you’re looking for meaning in the pomp and ceremony surrounding the anniversary 9/11, look no further than that.
Ceterem autem censeo, status esse delendam.
